


Forward Momentum

by azurelunatic



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: A plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel, ADHD, Cunning plans insufficiently thought through, Disability, Engineering Fail, Feats of engineering prowess, Gen, Mention of Surgery, Physical Disability, mental disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-06
Updated: 2010-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurelunatic/pseuds/azurelunatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Miles is frustrated with post-surgery immobility, and hatches a Plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forward Momentum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashmusing](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ashmusing).



> For a [prompt requesting a main character on the ADHD spectrum](http://access-fandom.dreamwidth.org/20136.html?thread=267176#cmt267176).
> 
> Miles Naismith Vorkosigan has canon physical disabilities including brittle bones, resulting in both scheduled and emergency surgery. He is also often described as "hyper".
> 
> [](http://rb.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**rb**](http://rb.dreamwidth.org/) was kind enough to allow me to bounce things in IRC; any mistakes are still of course my own. [](http://mathsnerd.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**mathsnerd**](http://mathsnerd.dreamwidth.org/) also assisted.

Staying still was sometimes more torture than the doctors and the knives and the braces. Miles lay in bed after the latest round of medical intervention, _twitching_. He'd tried to run. He'd fallen. It hadn't ended well.

He couldn't move, but he could read. There was a stack of book-discs on the table, taller than the carafe of water, just within reach. Miles pulled one of them over, put it in the hand-viewer, buzzed through a few paragraphs. He'd already read that bit, and it wasn't useful. Not right now. He ran his finger down the stack and picked another.

An hour later the whole stack was scattered in various attitudes about his bed, new sections highlighted and more half-finished notes shot throughout them, and the beginnings of a plan drawn out on his personal tablet. The rest would have to wait until Ivan, or better, Elena, visited. Ivan might argue. Miles had seen the telltale signs of a Bothari lecture in some of Elena's discomposed mannerisms, and it might be a week before she forgot what Bothari termed "her place" enough to offer command-level criticism of his tactics.

 

Access to the attics was unsecured, at least once one was already within the confines of Vorkosigan House. Miles deputized Ivan to do the running, and the lifting, and Elena to fetch book-discs from the library if they weren't already available on the console in Miles's room. Miles found the familiar routines of a Plan comforting, amidst the exciting new details of implementation. "You can go help Ivan haul," he told Elena, and pulled the manual closer. Why yes, they might indeed be able to get away with only three power packs, and there would be no need for a special converter after all, if they just.... He allowed himself to become immersed in the details once again.

It was finally finished, and Miles beamed at their creation. With the loyal help of Ivan and Elena, they had converted an old military-issue cot and a camping chair (retrieved from the attic) to accept the field generators from no fewer than six sets of various-sized antigrav crutches (most of which had been stuffed into various corners of Miles's closet): three pair on the bottom, for lift; two pair rear-facing at the stern, for propulsion; a single unit pointed port and starboard at the front, for steering.

"Does it work?" Elena asked.

"Only one way to find out!" Miles said, grinning so widely he felt his face might crack.

Ivan accomplished the transfer with the ease born of long practice. Miles held the controls in his lap and toggled the first three pairs. With a slight hum as the antigravs drew power, the bed lifted, just barely clearing the floor.

Ivan drew in a breath and held it as Miles bumped the controls for the rear units. With the unit turned at a right angle to the primary gravitational pull, with a frictionless cushion of antigrav below the cot, it ought to -- yes, there was the thrust. Miles goosed the switches in fractional-second pulses, unwilling to get too much speed in the confines of his room.

"Let's try the hall!" he suggested. "Get the door!"

Ivan palmed the door open, and Miles eased the bed through.

The hall on this level of the wing was long and straight. Miles sped down it, suffering himself to accept Ivan's help turning around at the end before zooming back.

As riveting as speed was, the attraction soon palled. "I want to try outside," Miles said. It was the work of only a few moments to get the bed into the lift, which was the nice kind, sized like a cargo lift with great wide doors and plenty of interior room, but fitted to match the rest of Vorkosigan House, down to the parquetry tiles on the floor. Miles vibrated in the bed. He'd done it! Yes, there was certainly a perfectly good float-chair that he would be able to use as soon as the doctors cleared him again, but that was beside the point. He'd done this himself. He cheered, internally, as they descended.

"I'll turn you, so you can get out," Ivan said, already reaching for the bed in anticipation of permission.

"No, let me," Miles said, and manipulated his switches.

A few things happened at once, and very fast.

The bed shot forward, vibrating from side to side and up and down.  
The antigrav units emitted some very unhappy sounds as all twelve slightly-misaligned units on the bed phased in interesting and never-designed-to-do-that ways with the more powerful antigrav units in the lift.  
The lift slammed to a halt.  
The bed hit the floor and friction dragged it also to a halt.  
Ivan yelled and Elena shrieked.  
The lights in the lift blew.

"Oh, _hell_," Miles said into the dim emergency glow, and for once Elena did not reprimand him on his language. They waited, in silence, for the Armsmen to come with the repair crew.

 

That evening, his mother perched on the side of his stupid immobile bed in his stupid closet of a room, and sighed. "Miles, you really must--"

She paused, and Miles tensed. She had already given all three of them the engineering lecture about what had gone wrong as soon as the repair crew hauled them to safety. Worse, Elena had had better questions about antigrav theory than he had. Bothari would have heard the security report by now. What if Bothari had said he couldn't play with Elena anymore?

His mother sighed again. "You must think of the other possible outcomes of any plan. Victory is never assured. Therefore, a strategy that only encompasses victory is insufficient, particularly when its modes of failure are unacceptable." She patted Miles's hand, then fluttered out in a swirl of tan skirts, leaving Miles alone with his thoughts.

**Author's Note:**

> The portrayal of Miles with hyper mode in full swing is informed by my own attention focus difficulties, and my high school experience with a friend diagnosed with ADHD. Many of his projects crashed and burned, or generated eccentric results, because he plowed full-speed-ahead through them: working from his first idea and planning for complete success, without considering the possibility that he might fail. He identified strongly with Miles, and friendship with him was exhilarating, often terrifying, but never boring. He probably needed to hear Adam Savage's aphorism, that "Failure is always an option", but this was before the days of the MythBusters.
> 
> In addition to the "hyper", Miles is of course also physically disabled, and I envisioned the intersection stretching the limits of his patience.


End file.
